leadership vs management research paper

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Leadership vs. Management: What’s the Difference?

• 31 Oct 2019

The terms “leadership” and “management” are often used interchangeably. While there is some overlap between the work that leaders and managers do, there are also significant differences.

In a keynote discussion at Harvard Business School Online’s annual conference, Connext , HBS Professors Nancy Koehn and Joe Fuller explored the interplay between leadership and management and shared how they define the two disciplines.

Koehn referenced the work of HBS Professor John Kotter, who she said aptly defined the “activity of leadership.”

Leadership vs Management: What's the difference?

“ Leadership , he wrote, is the creation of positive, non-incremental change, including the creation of a vision to guide that change—a strategy—the empowerment of people to make the vision happen despite obstacles, and the creation of a coalition of energy and momentum that can move that change forward,” Koehn said.

Fuller, who teaches the online course Management Essentials , relayed his thoughts on how management compares.

“ Management is getting the confused, misguided, unmotivated, and misdirected to accomplish a common purpose on a regular, recurring basis,” Fuller said. “I think the ultimate intersection between leadership and management is an appreciation for what motivates and causes individuals to behave the way they do, and the ability to draw out the best of them with a purpose in mind.”

Watch the full keynote discussion between Nancy Koehn and Joe Fuller below:

While these definitions draw parallels between the roles of leaders and managers, they also allude to some key contrasts. Here are three differences between leadership and management.

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How Is Leadership Different from Management?

1. process vs. vision.

Effective leadership is centered on a vision to guide change.

Whereas managers set out to achieve organizational goals through implementing processes, such as budgeting, organizational structuring, and staffing, leaders are more intent on thinking ahead and capitalizing on opportunities.

“I think of management as working with other people to make sure the goals an organization has articulated are executed,” says HBS Dean Nitin Nohria in an interview for the online course Management Essentials . “It’s the process of working with others to ensure the effective execution of a chosen set of goals. Leadership is about developing what the goals should be. It’s more about driving change.”

2. Organizing vs. Aligning

In the book, On Becoming a Leader , scholar Warren Bennis presents a list of key differences between managers and leaders , including:

• The manager administers; the leader innovates
• The manager maintains; the leader develops
• The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people

Managers pursue goals through coordinated actions and tactical processes, or tasks and activities that unfold over stages to reach a certain outcome. For example, they may implement a decision-making process when leading a critical meeting , or when devising a plan for communicating organizational change .

Leaders, on the other hand, are less focused on how to organize people to get work done and more on finding ways to align and influence them.

“Your central function in a position of leadership is to mobilize others so they can execute a set of individual and collective tasks,” says HBS Professor Anthony Mayo in the online course Leadership Principles .

By developing a personal leadership style through self-reflection and honest feedback , leaders can learn how to empower their employees and inspire them to both believe in and pursue important organizational initiatives.

3. Position vs. Quality

The title “manager” often denotes a specific role within an organization’s hierarchy, while referring to someone as a “leader” has a more fluid meaning.

“Manager is a title. It’s a role and set of responsibilities,” says leadership coach Doc Norton in Forbes . “Having the position of manager does not make you a leader. The best managers are leaders, but the two are not synonymous. Leadership is the result of action. If you act in a way that inspires, encourages, or engages others, you are a leader. It doesn't matter your title or position.”

Leadership is a quality that needs to be shaped. Through developing emotional intelligence and learning how to influence others , professionals of all levels can build greater self-awareness and understand how to bring out the best in themselves and others.

For seasoned and aspiring managers alike, possessing strong leadership skills can not only lead to better job performance , but an improved knowledge of how to influence the context and environment in which decisions get made.

Related: How to Be an Effective Leader at Any Stage of Your Career

Unleashing Your Leadership Potential

Leadership skills can be developed at any stage of your career. By understanding the characteristics of effective leaders and how leadership differs from management, you can develop techniques for coaching colleagues, delivering feedback, and overcoming specific organizational challenges.

Do you want to become a more effective leader and manager? Download our free leadership and management e-book to find out how. Also, explore our online leadership and management courses to learn how you can take charge of your professional development and accelerate your career. To find the right course for you, download the free flowchart .

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• Corpus ID: 252049702

LEADERSHIP VS MANAGEMENT: UNDERSTANDING THE KEY DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES

• N. Gradinarova
• Business, Psychology

2 Citations

Traits and skills of effective leaders in antimicrobial stewardship, the intertwined effects of digital literacy, agile mindset on design thinking skill and management control competency: insights from thai young accountants, 24 references, a force for change : how leadership differs from management, the bass handbook of leadership : theory, research, and managerial applications, leadership versus managment: a key distinction—at least in theory, leaders: strategies for taking charge, a 1976 theory of charismatic leadership, managing the dream: leadership in the 21st century, managers and leaders are they different, learning to lead: a workbook on becoming a leader by warren bennis and joan goldsmith. reading, mass.: addison-wesley, 1994, related papers.

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Management Versus Leadership

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Introduction

Within the leadership literature and the management literature, two different but more or less mirroring advocacies can be discerned. On the one hand, there is advocacy for true leadership, namely, a form of leadership that expresses emotion and passion and not cool rationality, which is characterized by creativity and the fostering of innovation instead of routine, and that understands quality and value and goes beyond concerns for effectiveness and efficiency. This true type of leadership is contrasted with “mere management” (e.g., Zaleznik 1977 ; Murray 2010 ). On the other hand, there is a broad management literature that favors a rational type of management. This literature ranks knowledge higher than intuition and what feels best; it puts proven approaches and predictability over chance and risky trials, and it values problem-solving capacity over soul-searching. Management, in this line, is contrasted with irrational forms of steering and organizing (e.g., Beer 1967 ;...

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Institute for Management Research, Department of Public Administration, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Berry Tholen

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Correspondence to Berry Tholen .

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Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA

Ali Farazmand

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Tholen, B. (2018). Management Versus Leadership. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2823-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2823-1

Received : 15 November 2017

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Published : 13 December 2017

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Editorial: Leadership and management in organizations: Perspectives from SMEs and MNCs

Introduction.

Leadership and management are fundamental aspects for the smooth performance, progress, and growth of any organization with respect to its nature and the way it operates (Siyal et al., 2021a ). Every multinational, national, SME, and corporate sector needs effective management and leadership. This allows them to perform smoothly and produce significant output, which leads to growth and development. It is believed that the best leadership and management make remarkable contributions to the growth of institutions and yield remarkable outcomes (Siyal and Peng, 2018 ; Kouzes and Posner, 2023 ). This is due to the increasing recognition of and demand for effective leaders and managers by the corporate sectors, MNCs, and SMEs that are aiming to lead the global market. For this, they need qualified, trained, and committed leaders and managers who can efficiently and effectively lead the team, resources, and market. It is evident that several organizations acknowledge the need for effective leadership and efficient management, but they are still uncertain about the proper management, leadership style, and behaviors that are most effective for the growth and development of the corporate sector, MNCs, and SMEs, along with the development of their human resources (Kelly and Hearld, 2020 ; Siyal et al., 2021b ). Considering all these aspects and conflicting results from the past, the role of leadership and management in the smooth operationalization, growth, and development of the corporate sector, MNC, and SMEs remains unresolved.

This Research Topic focuses on leadership and management in organizations in diverse workplace settings including MNCs and SMEs. The call for papers was published between February 2022 and August 2022, during which the COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact some regions but not others. Scholars and practitioners were invited to submit research articles and brief reports pertaining to leadership and management in organizations, including corporations and SMEs, in the field of organizational psychology to the Frontiers in Psychology journal. In response to this call for papers, a huge number of academicians and practitioners submitted their research. Out of a total of 81 submissions, 18 were accepted and published under this theme. The Research Topic includes studies from diverse cultural and industrial settings, such as academia and industries including MNCs and SMEs, from across the globe. The businesses covered in this Research Topic are enterprises, manufacturers, SMEs, MNCs, educational institutes, logistics SMEs, and government sectors. The submitting authors were from different countries, including the Republic of Korea, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi), Oman, Qatar, Serbia, and Poland. The authors came up with new research approaches and methodologies, contributing to the theory and practice in this important emerging research domain of leadership and management.

Xu et al. investigated whether and how differential leadership in SMEs influences subordinate knowledge hiding. They analyzed the underlying mechanisms of chain-mediator–job insecurity and territorial consciousness and the boundary condition–leadership performance expectation. The results indicated that differential leadership plays a potential role in promoting subordinate knowledge hiding through the serial intervening mechanism of job insecurity and territorial consciousness in SMEs. This study contributes to the existing academic literature by empirically analyzing the under-investigated correlation between differential leadership and subordinate knowledge hiding in SMEs and by exploring the underlying mechanisms and boundary condition.

Ding et al. examined the link between an employee's professional identity and their success via the mediating role of critical thinking. They also examined the interaction of an employee's professional commitment and a leader's motivational language by critically analyzing employee success. This study was conducted on Chinese MNCs by use of a time-lagged study design. The results show a positive relation between an employee's professional identity and their success. Furthermore, the critical analysis mediated the link between professional identity and employee success.

Jun et al. examined the impact of supervisors' authentic leadership styles on the turnover of their subordinates in multiple organizations in the Republic of Korea. Their findings generalized the effects of leadership on turnover across different research contexts. Furthermore, they proposed a new mechanism and tested the mediation and moderation of the supervisor-perceived support and organizational identification, which reduces the turnover rate and help organizations to retain their best talents.

Leadership and management in organizations are crucial elements in ensuring the success of both MNCs and SMEs. While MNCs may have more resources and a more formal structure, SMEs often have a more flexible and agile approach to leadership and management. Both MNCs and SMEs can benefit from effective leadership and management practices such as clear communication, setting achievable goals, fostering a positive work culture, and continuously adapting to changing market conditions. Ultimately, the key to success in both types of organizations is having leaders and managers who are able to inspire and motivate their teams to achieve their goals.

In this regard, this Research Topic has introduced this novel research work by scholars and researchers from around the globe, with a focus on leadership and management perspectives and their role in organizations. Thus, the selected Research Topic is very important for the business, industry, management, academic, and economic value of practitioners and academic institutions at all levels, as well as those with country-wide and international offices. This Research Topic has contributed through novel approaches and provide suggestions for the managers and leaders of corporate sectors, MNCs and SMEs, academicians, academic institutions, social scientists, students, policymakers, government and non-government agencies, and other related stakeholders. Similarly, the findings in this Research Topic have suggested that investigating the impact of leadership and management in organizations could influence future research, and further studies could compare the effectiveness of leadership and management in MNCs and SMEs.

Author contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• Kelly R. J., Hearld L. R. (2020). Burnout and leadership style in behavioral health care: A literature review . J. Behav. Health Serv. Res. 47 , 581–600. 10.1007/s11414-019-09679-z [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kouzes J. M., Posner B. Z. (2023). The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations . New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. [ Google Scholar ]
• Siyal S., Peng X. (2018). Does leadership lessen turnover? The moderated mediation effect of leader–member exchange and perspective taking on public servants . J. Public Affairs 18 , e1830. 10.1002/pa.1830 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Siyal S., Saeed M., Pahi M. H., Solangi R., Xin C. (2021a). They can't treat you well under abusive supervision: investigating the impact of job satisfaction and extrinsic motivation on healthcare employees . Ration. Soc . 33 , 401–423. 10.1177/10434631211033660 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Siyal S., Xin C., Umrani W. A., Fatima S., Pal D. (2021b). How do leaders influence innovation and creativity in employees? The mediating role of intrinsic motivation . Adm. Soc. 53 , 1337–1361. 10.1177/0095399721997427 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

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The Comparison of Leadership and Management in the Businesses and Organizations

2021, International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations

Leadership is a responsibility with accomplishment toward the task and involvement with the teams preparing and guiding the team members to take on the same line of insight, vision, and achievement. The paper aims to explain how leadership is different from management, and how leadership is more focused on the vision compared to the manager's scope in the organization processes. Leadership uses the opportunities by capitalizing on the work. Mangers work on business implementation and decision-making. Leadership involves organizing and mobilizing the teams to achieve the desired task. Though the leaders and managers work very closely the differences vary on taking the responsibilities to lead the team forward for accomplishment. Managers can be good leaders when properly trained and provided the opportunity to achieve the ability to communicate, motivate and inspire the team members.

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